In ancient times and places where potable water was scarce and people drank alcoholic beverages for substance, how were the people not dehydrated and hung over all the time?

Question

In ancient times and places where potable water was scarce and people drank alcoholic beverages for substance, how were the people not dehydrated and hung over all the time?

In: Biology

Answer 1

When you think of the kind of beer that people would drink all day, it’s nowhere near the alcohol volume that you’d expect from beer today – small beer back then was more like 1% abv. Many cultures that drank wine would dilute the wine with water to make it less harsh. So there were a lot of ways to minimize the amount of alcohol taken in while still using it to make water potable.